As some of you know, I'm a real Facebook enthusiast, I think it has so much potential. I mean, what other single brand, service or product do 55% of Canadians all use almost daily (closer to 95% for younger folks)?

Speaking of that, you know what's funny/amazing, last week I was in the main library, and for fun, I walked behind all the internet users in all the spots they are set up, hardwired as well as laptop users. Roughly, I'd say 15-20% of the users were on Facebook as I checked them out.

Anyway, here is how local media stack up in terms of their FB pages (number of fans):

The correlation between the targeted age demographic of each medium and followers on Facebook is pretty interesting, actually. I mean, the Zone has young listeners, and the Oak Bay News is probably catering to an older, perhaps even elderly set.

The correlation between the targeted age demographic of each medium and followers on Facebook is pretty interesting, actually. I mean, the Zone has young listeners, and the Oak Bay News is probably catering to an older, perhaps even elderly set.

I think radio also has a chance to use it, mention it more often. Radio can run a promotion on Facebook, without breaking Facebook marketing rules. They just don't mention the competition ON FB, but they can have peeps go there to enter. One time they ran a promotion where they got entrants to change their avatars to their promo avatar in order to be eligible. Was very popular. Modern take on the old promo where you get listeners to answer their phones "I listen to Jack FM" when they answer their home phone.

Radio can say on air "hey, go request your song on our FB page now" and the like.

CFAX is directing all their listeners to talk about stories on FB now, and it's moving them up nicely each day.

Should be interesting over the next few months to see if FB can maintain its momentum or not. Lately I know more people that have deleted their accounts than have signed on, or actively use existing ones.

Should be interesting over the next few months to see if FB can maintain its momentum or not. Lately I know more people that have deleted their accounts than have signed on, or actively use existing ones.

That is an interesting article. But although it says FB is uncool, the numbers don't indicate that anyone is leaving, and very few young people have internet security or privacy concerns.

And I think the reason it's not leaving is because there is nowhere else to go. It would be like saying cell phones are uncool. But nobody is going to abandon them, there is no alternative (right now).

Here's some good stats, including:

Internationally, Facebook.com ranks in the top two websites in every market except China, where Sina Weibo, Baidu Zhidao and Renren are the dominant social networks. Facebook.com’s largest footprint is in Canada, capturing almost 12 percent of all visits in that market.

I'm not so sure I agree with you about that. It was pretty easy to see how quickly folks locked down their Facebook profiles to "Friends only" when those security settings became easier to use. I think young people do indeed care about privacy, but I don't think they understand the ramifications of having information permanently archived in the bowels of Facebook's servers.

That article also says that Google is now not very favoured, or trusted. But who doesn't use Google?

Count me as one of those people who don't use any of Google's cloud services due to privacy concerns.

I guess I get confused as to what anyone would put anything online that they worried about someone finding out about. IMO it is a bit self-centred to think that anyone actually would give a rats ass about anything I do generally let alone online.

If you are plotting a coup or something well that should be done in-person anyways it is good to see the eyes of your comrades to see who will double cross you.

I guess I get confused as to what anyone would put anything online that they worried about someone finding out about. IMO it is a bit self-centred to think that anyone actually would give a rats ass about anything I do generally let alone online.

If you are plotting a coup or something well that should be done in-person anyways it is good to see the eyes of your comrades to see who will double cross you.

Ya, I use a lot of Google Docs, just makes sense to me, and is easy for collaborators. But like G says, the stuff I put there is pretty useless/boring to anyone else.

In Canada we're lucky to live in a country that doesn't clamp down on free speech but this country and only a handful of others are the exceptions.

The USA's intelligence networks are in bed with Google on a number of fronts and Facebook sells account data under the terms of America's new anti-terrorism laws. Both of these organization's contributions to the intelligence communities of the US are well documented, particularly Google's strong ties to the CIA.

Facebook: One company - 850M users. That's a LOT of data to be sitting on. I also bet that most people who use Facebook games and other silly apps don't realize that those games aren't just mining their data, but also their friend's data too.

I use facebook, but post very little information about where I am or what I'm doing.

IMO it is a bit self-centred to think that anyone actually would give a rats ass about anything I do generally let alone online.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it is a case of someone at Google looking into G-Man's account and saying "Oh, I see G-Man is doing this today in Victoria, better document that".

You're probably not being personally monitored by Google, but you're kidding yourself if you don't think that data in your "private" account is being used as part of a larger data/intelligence gathering project.

I'm cool with FB mining my info, becasue if they think what I do is typical of a xx-year-old male consumer, they got some funky data.

All FB has is my real name, not other info.

It's nice to have a real birthday, then a FB birthday on another date, I get lots of presents twice.

Because I'm scared of losing personal data in a home break-in or laptop theft, I do keep all my passwords, credit card and banking information, copies of my passport, birth certificate etc. in the cloud. That's a good idea, right?

The USA's intelligence networks are in bed with Google on a number of fronts and Facebook sells account data under the terms of America's new anti-terrorism laws. Both of these organization's contributions to the intelligence communities of the US are well documented, particularly Google's strong ties to the CIA.

The US government (I have US citizenship) already has my address, my birth certificate, my passport information, my yearly tax returns and loads of other information. If knowing that I was at the Tapa Bar last night is the final piece of information they need to fabricate a case against me, I'm just going to take that risk.

It should be no surprise to anyone with even a cursory memory of the origins of the interweb that US intelligence (among many other intelligence agency's, including Canada) is deeply embedded in the web; lest anyone forget the contemporary commercialized internet as we know it today is hardly the first foray into cyberspace. That distinction belongs to the ARPANet, a fully funded enterprise by the Pentagon and certain key US institutions of higher learning, including MIT and Stanford, and dating from the 1960's. Its orginal function was to link those facilites with the Pentagon by, surprise, secure computer connections that employed among other things the precursor to what we refer to today as email.

Try a traceroute to many domains and invariably you will discover various hops that are routed through - again, no surprise - Virginia, which just happens to be the center of the American intelligence community.

The US government (I have US citizenship) already has my address, my birth certificate, my passport information, my yearly tax returns and loads of other information. If knowing that I was at the Tapa Bar last night is the final piece of information they need to fabricate a case against me, I'm just going to take that risk.

The point of data mining by security agencies is not to determine whether you like Tide or Sunlight. They want to know whether or not you're pre-disposed to a certain health condition, have undesirable political leanings, are in contact with a certain subset of the population, and how you react to given situations. The value in knowing this about you is highest during times of political unrest, say when a government decides a subset of the population is likely to commit a crime or engage in acts against the state (i.e. the backlash against Muslims in the US since 9/11).

I spent a good chunk of my education studying data mining and its effects on the general population. To put it bluntly, once I recognized what was in store (professionally) for folks engaged in my future profession I backed off and got as far away from the industry as I could.

And did you guys know that Google is involved in a project with the CIA to try and predict the future?

I agree with those who have concerns about how corporations and governments are using all that data, Mike's insights in particular.

On a related note, startups / companies and individuals are working on projects that would let users (or customers) own their data, and sell it to the companies. That is, if I'm going to create all this data that's mined for (mostly) business purposes (to sell me things), why shouldn't I own that data and actually be in the business myself of selling it to vendors? (I don't have any direct links to those efforts, although I did meet someone recently who's working on this, within a larger corporation that set up an innovation incubator within its own hierarchy. It happens!)

The expression "supply and demand" was first coined as "demand and supply," by James Denham-Steuart in An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy, written in 1767. In his Inquiry, Denham-Steuart says of demand, "it must constantly appear reciprocal. If I demand a pair of shoes, the shoemaker either demands money, or something else for his own use," adding, "The nature of demand is to encourage industry." Nine years later, in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote, "The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence."

It helps to revisit these elementary lessons because we've been ignoring them on the Web — at the cost of billions of dollars in lost opportunities for businesses other than those driven by advertising and "big data" farming.

To see what I mean, consider this fact: you are not a customer of Facebook or Twitter. Nor of Google's search, mail, and other free services. The actual customers of those companies are advertisers, not you. In fact, you and I are the products being sold to advertisers. No matter how well those companies serve us with free goodies, the fact remains that these companies' consumers and customers are different populations, and we are among the former, and not the latter, because we pay them nothing. In Adam Smith's terms, we do not employ them.

And, because we are merely consumers of these services, our concerns tend to be dismissed when they are in conflict with the ambitions of those services' customers, the advertisers. This is why websites, advertisers and third parties take liberties with our personal data, our privacy, and our tolerance for "personalization" of messages that still fail 99% of the time.

This causes two problems. One is abuse of consumers. The other is a lack of what we could bring to the market's table — besides money — if we were full-fledged customers. Addressing the first problem are consumer protection efforts. Addressing the second problem are customer empowerment efforts.

Maybe customer empowerment is just another way of helping the big corporate advertising overlords, but then again, maybe it will create healthier and more resilient markets (vs. controlled and corrupted ones). A paranoid economy isn't so good.

When you buy a game, you buy the rules. Play happens in the space between the rules.

I don't expect a 3.9 to make waves.. either on air, TV or in the water

Except that EVERYBODY is talking about it. If you search "bus" vs. "earthquake" and "quake", the quake term shows up in twitter and FB more than 10x the popularity of bus (maybe the biggest non-quake news story today in Victoria, the bus attack). Quake is also more popular than "boxing". Except the major news media, who has gone blank since dinner time.